I have not seen too much about it on the ORG, but if you are all worried about the price of gas they why not convert you car to run Gas (well LPG Gas) over here heaps of people do it and the LPG company even allow you to pay it off per tank filled.

You lose about 8% preformance but you still have a switch to convert back to normal Petrol when you want. Every petrol station has an LPG filler unit here now.

The price of LPG is 43c per liter compaired to $1.20 for Petrol.

The LPG tank will take a bit of your boot space , but not that much . Nearly every taxi over here in Oz runs on the stuff.

 

We dont have that here, any more info on it?

 

Haha, Chinese taxis have those too! But they rarely use it since they drive like crazy ***** around town, and LPG doesn't give the ooomph as gas supposedly.

 

Really you don't have LPG conversions for cars over there , the land of the giant SUV ..my god... sound very sus...

here is just one of lots of companies doing them here..

http://www.unigas.com.au/pages/conversions.html

Really, it's a no brainer for fuel saving if you have a big capacity motor or a heavy truck/Suv/Car ..

Even Ford and GMH sell their cars out of the factory with the conversion kit allready fitted as an option.

Fuel is not that much cheaper over there that you would not consider it .

I think this will be taking off big in the US soon.

 

Sounds interesting. Probably less pollution too. But if it does catch on in the US, you can bet that prices for LPG will go up due to "demand." Or some threat will arise, causing prices to spike.

 

my uncle had two cars setup like that in india. only thing you have to worry about somebody hittin you

 

What type of efficiency exists, because I don't think we can say the car gets 24 mpg for gasoline, and 24 mpg for LP. Every major utility co. in a major metro US city has FFV vehicles, usually Taurus but the Civic has or will have it too. I think they traded performance and costs, for emissions. I'm no expert so someone who knows, by all means educate us!

 

Apparently the latest generation units are almost equivalant to the original Petrol unit,however I would hazard a guess from my experience that you lose at least 2-5% HP and about the same with mileage. However you do reduce emmision quite dramatically and guess you can travel alot further without filling up as you are adding an 80lt tank to your car. This is no new technoligy it been around for ages and cost of putting the system in your car is about US $1200-1500.

I still cannot belive that it is not used over in the USA. Must be becuse of your formally lower fuel price in comparision to most countries. The usa would have access to large LPG gas reserves, I'm sure.

 

I work in the same building as NJ Division of Youth and Family Services and I noticed a majority of their state issued cars (Ford Escorts) run on LPG.

 

almost every nation in the world has this "technology", but the US completely lags behind ...there is no infrastructure, no filling stations to fill with gas. This is one cool alternative but it won't catch on overnight. For now, sell your gas guzzlin cars and get smthg that gets 30-40 mpg...:-(

 

What the heck are you talking about? The US a top consumer of LPG. There are LPG versions of almost every domestic truck and van available, including Jeeps. Just about every forklift uses LPG. LPG is available for many rental, taxi, commercial, and other fleet vehicles. There are also a handful of LPG passenger vehicles, such the Escort, Taurus, Sebring/Cirrus/Stratus, Caravan, Cavalier, Camry, and Civic. Check out this link for starters: http://science.howstuffworks.com/lpg4.htm

Not only is LPG currently only $1.20-1.40 for the equivalent of a gallon of gasoline, it is safer and better for engines. LPG tanks are designed to withstand 30g before deforming, unlike the gas tanks in most cars which are probably thin plastic or sheet metal that will puncture upon impact. In the event of a catastrophe, the LPG vapors are less combustible than gasoline and vent into the air instead of pooling under the car and burning passengers to a crisp. And since it is a gas when injected into the intake manifolds, you don't get gummy varnish build-up or deposits or contamination of your engine oil. You won't get contamination of your fuel system or ignition either. Think about how much that will improve the long-term reliability of a car. Best of all, LPG is the most widely available fuel outside of gasoline and diesel. Just about every U-haul center can supply LPG.

One thing I didn't know about LPG until recently was how much cleaner it burns than gasoline. An engine running on LPG only produces 10-50% the emissions of gasoline. I kind of figured that's why they can run LPG forklifts and Zambonis indoors. Imagine how quickly that would clean up some smoggy cities in the US and reduce acid rain, asthma, etc. But as I said in my earlier post, as soon as LPG grows in popularity, the prices will probably rise, making it less competitive against gasoline. Then we are back to square one again.

 

thanks for education, you idiot! if the gas was so widely available in US, then why arent you using it for your car? or you run out of UHAUL stations in your area? Read the very same article you provided: the cars that can run on gas are not avail. on showroom floor, but have to be custom ordered. The LPG is widely avail in US for commerical fleet only. I know for a fact that in Europe, you dont have to have a special-made vehicle, but conversion kits are sold for retail consumers, and there are more places to fill these gas tanks than in US.

 

this technology does exits, in fact you can get stations to fuel your car at home! its not popular here because until very recently the price difference was small. that is the only reason. things only recently changed on the price scale, it will take consumer demand and infrastructure time to catch up. But not much time. If these prices get worse and go through the winter, you'll see wider adoption of these kits within 6 months.

 

Don't be so pissy, dude. just because YOU don't understand the way it works doesn't mean it's not out there.

I used to work for a company that did LPG conversions and was working on a multi-purpose fuel sensor.. almost like a Mr Fusion... dump any popular gas/fuel through it you wanted, and the sensor would detect what it was and the concentration, then adjust ECU ignition and fuel maps accordingly. pretty fricken cool if you ask me. and that was 5 years ago when I was interning for an engineering firm in college.
We had two LPG vehicles sitting out front that were driven on a regular basis.. We didn't fill them up on site, so I know it had to be done somewhere... And I wouldn't mind driving 15-20 miles to fill up if I only did it every 3 weeks since you have a larger overall range between fillups than with gasoline.

I also worked for UPS for 4 years while in college... UPS has been using many, MANY variations of these things and other technologies for years- Nat Gas, LPG, Propane, gasoline, diesel.... They use electric tugs around the hub to move the heavy items that don't fit on conveyors, and also to help move trucks around as needed inside the buildings to keep the exhaust vapors down while employees are working in the hub.

UPS of course also has their own fueling stations for each type of fuel they use, so it's easy for them. (just like gov't fleets)


the drawback for the standard consumer is that there aren't filling stations at every corner like gasoline. There are still MANY stations in most major cities, and all over the state that offer refueling services for these cars.

Try doing a bit of research next time before you spout off crap like this. 30 seconds on google came up with this... And this was from a paper written in 1994!!!
http://www.texascenter.org/almanac/Air/AIRCH6P6.HTML

considering that was 11 years ago, there are many more stations out there now (and I HAVE seem them in town at regular filling stations here and there).



Why the US doesn't use it? because it's not the norm. for so long, gas was cheap and easy to come by here. those days are going to come to an end eventually, and we need to start preparing for it.

 

u could not have said it better!!

 

I personally think that in the long run,the spike in gas prices will be a good thing for alternate fuel [i.e lp gas,electric,hydrogen] programs in the automotive industry getting much better funding by the companies themselves. Especially when you they see all them huge gas guzzling suv's on their trade in lots,not reselling.Who knows maybe in 5-10 yrs. we will be trying to figure out how to mod our hydrogen maximas...

 

hhm, wouldnt that give us a nice ping to our engines

 

The price of a Lt of LPG is today .42c it was the same last month and six months ago , also every once in a bit it drops dramatically to like .20c per lt's when they over produce and cannot store the surplus otherwise it just gets burnt off in the production stack. The Price of ULP is today $1.25c per lt six months ago it was .78c.

Australia is a very large country and we have no problems distributing the stuff, you can find it almost anywhere at anytime even in the middle of the bush 300km from the nearest towns . It has been around for at least 15 years in a big way.

Until about 3-4 years ago the only way to get it was to have your car converted , now days almost all Australian car manufactures offer it as an option fit on a new car.

Have heard of some rev heads who run 95% Lpg and 5 % nitros mix just for fun.

 

best way to save gas is weight reduce i prob get 32-35 mpg on the highway

 

In Europe, many cars convert to use gas not gasoline to save money. They loose lots of power but the price cut is well worth it.

 

I have read, with interest, the responses regarding LP conversion. Does anyone have a link to a site /company that offers LP conversions for US cars (I have only been able to find info for Europe and elsewhere)??

 

is your friend.....

 

gee thanx!!! that is how I got the info in europe, but, NO info on US companies and suppliers...I kind of thought I'd get a little more help from the people that are suggesting the conversion and not just a useless reply sending me to google...but thanks anyway

 

blackpaladin...maybe you could help me out on this...everything google returns is for UK, India and everywhere else but North America (US specifically)...thanks

 

These are some of the sites I have found for you North American fellows , don't forget I am in the wonderful land of Oz....LOL

http://www.lpgli.com/index.html

http://www.parnellusa.com/default.as...versionsystems

Now we here in Australia produce LPG conversion for almost every vehicle on the road , so they could allways import the kit , however they would need to get it certified before fitting.

 

Thanks for your help Blackpaladin!! I will be sure to check out these sites and see what they have to offer for my vehicles. It does appear that there is limited availability for aftermarket conversions, but I will keep looking...thanks again